| Quick answer |
|---|
| The best tools for competitor benchmarking AI-generated answers are Ahrefs Brand Radar, which computes AI share of voice against named rivals from $199 per platform index, Qwairy from EUR 79 a month, and AthenaHQ near $295 for seeing which sources feed a competitor’s mentions. |
| How we compare | What that means on this page |
|---|---|
| Ranking basis | Whether the tool compares you to named rivals on one prompt set, and whether it exposes the sources behind their mentions. |
| Prices | Taken from vendor pricing pages in September 2026; currencies are quoted as published, not converted. |
| Testing | No head-to-head lab test was run. Every benchmark percentage is attributed to the report that produced it. |
| Independence | Every price was re-checked against the vendor’s own pricing page in September 2026, and figures available only from third-party trackers are marked as reported. No vendor paid for placement, and no link is affiliate or sponsored. |
Table of Contents
Mentions and citations are two different scoreboards
Google documents its AI features in Search and how links inside them are generated, which is the mechanism every tool on this page is sampling. Before comparing tools, separate the two things you are counting, because most dashboards blur them and the distinction changes what you do next.
- A mention is your brand being named in the answer. It is a recognition signal and drives awareness, but no traffic.
- A citation is your URL being linked as a source. It is a referral signal, and it is the one that produces sessions.
They move independently. A competitor can dominate mentions while a review site takes every citation, which is a completely different problem from being absent altogether. Any competitor benchmarking exercise that reports one blended “visibility score” hides exactly the gap you need to close.
Best tools for competitor benchmarking AI-generated answers compared
| Tool | Entry price | Competitive output | Catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | $199/mo per index | AI share of voice versus category rivals | All indexes $699 (reported) plus an Ahrefs plan; about $828 all in |
| Qwairy | From EUR 79/mo | 100 prompts across six-plus engines | Confirm which engines your tier includes |
| AthenaHQ | $295/mo Starter; free tier | Which URLs the engine cites for a prompt | Credit model; mid-market pricing |
| Profound | $99/mo Starter | Multi-engine comparison at $399 | Starter tracks ChatGPT only |
| Peec AI | EUR 85/mo Starter (reported) | Brand versus competitor rankings | Extra models EUR 30-140/mo each |
A benchmarking method you can run before you buy
Every vendor here will sell you its own prompt set, and a vendor-chosen set tends to flatter the brand paying for it. Build your own first — twenty prompts is enough — and run it manually across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity.
- Name your comparison set. Pick three competitors by name. Share of voice is meaningless without a denominator you chose deliberately.
- Cover five prompt types: category (“best X tools”), direct comparison (“you versus them”), problem (“how do I…”), pricing, and trust (“is X any good”).
- Score two columns per prompt — named, and linked — for every brand in the set. Never merge them.
- Repeat in seven days. The variance between two runs tells you whether you need daily refresh or a monthly manual check will do.
- Record the citation sources, not just the brands. The domains feeding your competitors’ mentions are your outreach list.
That last step is the highest-value output here, and the reason to prefer tools that expose sources rather than only scores.
The five tools in detail
Ahrefs Brand Radar
Ahrefs Brand Radar calculates an AI share of voice figure and benchmarks it against competitors in the same category. Sold per AI platform index at $199 a month each, or a reported $699 for all indexes, on top of an active Ahrefs subscription — a realistic all-in cost near $828 a month for full coverage as of mid-2026.
Qwairy
Qwairy lists Starter at EUR 79 a month (EUR 65 billed annually) for 100 prompts, Growth at EUR 199 for 300 and Business at EUR 449 for 800, with competitor benchmarking on every tier. Covers ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Mode and Grok among ten-plus engines.
Profound
Profound Starter is $99 a month and tracks ChatGPT only; competitor comparison across Perplexity and Google AI Overviews needs the $399 Growth tier. Enterprise adds up to nine engines, API access and all-time historical data, which is what makes long-run competitive trend analysis possible.
AthenaHQ
AthenaHQ lists a free Essential tier with 300 credits and Starter at $295 a month for 3,600 credits, built around source intelligence — identifying which URLs an AI system actually references for a prompt. The most direct answer to which sources are feeding a competitor mention.
Peec AI
Trackers report Starter at EUR 85 a month, Pro at EUR 205 and Advanced at EUR 425, with a 7-day trial and no card. Additional models cost roughly EUR 30, EUR 70 and EUR 140 a month by tier, so benchmarking across many engines raises the invoice sharply.
Cost per engine covered, worked out from the listed prices
Nobody publishes a per-engine price, yet engine coverage decides whether a benchmark is comparable to your rival’s. Dividing each listed monthly price by the engines named at that tier — using only the figures quoted above, read in September 2026 — produces this.
| Tool and tier | Listed price | Engines named at that tier | Cost per engine |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qwairy Starter | EUR 79/mo | 6 (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Mode, Grok) | EUR 79 ÷ 6 = EUR 13.17 |
| Profound Starter | $99/mo | 1 (ChatGPT) | $99 ÷ 1 = $99.00 |
| Profound Growth | $399/mo | 3 (adds Perplexity and Google AI Overviews) | $399 ÷ 3 = $133.00 |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar, one index | $199/mo plus a base Ahrefs plan | 1 platform index | $199 ÷ 1 = $199.00 |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar, all indexes (reported) | $699/mo, about $828 all in | Bundle break-even | $699 ÷ $199 = 3.51 indexes |
| AthenaHQ, Peec AI | $295 / EUR 85 | Not published per tier | Not computable from published figures |
Two things fall out of that arithmetic. The Ahrefs bundle only beats buying single indexes once you need a fourth one, because $699 buys the same as 3.51 indexes at $199 — below that, pay per index. And Profound Starter is the most expensive engine in the table at $99 for one, which is the real reason its Growth tier exists.
On Peec AI, adding three extra models at the Pro rate of EUR 70 costs EUR 210 on top of EUR 205 — the add-ons cost more than the plan. And AthenaHQ’s free Essential tier, at 300 credits, is the cheapest way to see a rival’s source list before paying anything.
How to read published benchmarks without misleading yourself
Industry averages circulate widely in this category and are easy to misuse. AthenaHQ’s State of AI Search 2026 report puts the average brand mention rate at 17.2 percent. A separate 2026 benchmark of 50 B2B SaaS firms by DerivateX reports an average AI Presence Score of 56.9 out of 100, with 44 percent scoring under 50.
Neither figure tells you whether your own number is good. Share of voice depends almost entirely on how many brands a typical answer names in your category: where an answer lists three vendors, the leader may hold 30 percent or more; where it lists twelve, the leader may hold far less. Benchmark against the named leader in your own prompt set and against your own previous period. Our guides to AI search monitoring tools and ranking in ChatGPT cover the measurement and the remediation sides, generative engine optimisation explains the discipline the numbers belong to, and optimising for Perplexity deals with the one engine that publishes its sources most openly.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best tools for competitor benchmarking AI-generated answers?
Ahrefs Brand Radar is the most direct competitor benchmarking tool, calculating AI share of voice against rivals in your category. Qwairy is the cheapest credible entry at EUR 79 a month, AthenaHQ at about $295 shows which sources feed a competitor’s mentions, and Profound needs its $399 tier for multi-engine comparison.
How do you measure share of voice inside an AI Overview?
Fix a prompt set, then count. For each prompt, record which brands are named and which are linked, and express your appearances as a share of all brand mentions returned across the set. Two rules keep the number honest: the prompt set must not change between periods, and you must count mentions and citations separately, because an answer can name you without linking to you.
Can AI benchmarking tools show which sources an AI engine cites for a competitor?
Yes — this is the specific job of source intelligence tooling. AthenaHQ is built around identifying which URLs an AI system references for a given prompt, and Ahrefs Brand Radar surfaces citation sources alongside mentions. A competitor’s citation list is a ready-made target list: the review sites, comparison pages and forums you are absent from.
What is a good AI share of voice benchmark?
Published 2026 benchmarks vary by source and category, as the 17.2 percent average cited above shows. Practitioner guidance commonly treats 10 to 15 percent as solid for an established brand and 25 to 40 percent as market-leading, with enterprise category leaders quoted between 40 and 70 percent. Because the absolute figure swings hugely with how many brands an answer names, track your own trend and your gap to the named leader rather than an industry average.
Should you benchmark mentions or citations against competitors?
Both, in separate columns. Mentions show whether engines treat a rival as part of the category; citations show whose pages feed the answer and earn the click. A competitor that leads on mentions while a review site takes the citations needs different work from one that owns both, and a blended score hides that decision.
Conclusion
If you already pay for Ahrefs, Brand Radar is the shortest path to a competitor benchmarking number — provided you accept that full engine coverage pushes the all-in cost near $828 a month. If you do not, Qwairy from EUR 79 is the cheapest credible standalone, and AthenaHQ is worth the step up when you need the source list behind a rival’s mentions rather than the score itself.
Whichever you buy, keep the prompt set fixed, keep mentions and citations in separate columns, and treat your competitors’ citation sources as the actual work list. The dashboard tells you the gap; the source list tells you where to close it. Our roundup of answer engine optimization tools covers the execution side, and the wider AI marketing stack covers who reports the result.
